So I get an invite to an ‘Introduction to Lync 2010’ from our friends at Microsoft. All good, it’s a webinar using Lync, so well worth some of my time.
The invitation comes in, all looks fine, so I have a look around within the invite. It’s very Live meeting in look and feel with newer fonts and colours. At the bottom is a ‘First online meeting?’ hyperlink.
I click it, may as well see if there is marketing blurb or a client to be had pre meeting etc. I click it and where does it go : http://itweb/v7/dogfood/communicator/pages/c_redir.aspx
Now, a couple of issues here, 1. it’s an unqualified url, so clearly meant for internal use at Microsoft . Who does that still, I make sure even internal links are at least qualified! (My argument being that it will work no matter what and if it’s ever needed externally then there is no issue or reconfig to be done) 2. Yes, you saw it coming… dogfood… Now are we the dogs and this is our food? Are their sales people the dogs?
All in all I was left slightly unimpressed. I’d expect this from ‘Mom n Pops IT shop’ but arguably THE worlds leading software vendor…using their OWN product to market the very same product…. Inappropriate = FAIL.

2 thoughts on “Lync server undermined by poor marketing”

Not sure where you got you invite from but you are correct this is a internal URL. To your dogfood comments this is an internal MSFT talk we use to describe our internal testing pools. The term eating our own dogfood is how we put it so it refers to the program and Microsofts internal testign process. Its not meant for external exposure so yes someone has mistakenly used one of our testing facilities to do a customer facing presentation which I am sure in hindsight wasnt the greatest idea but I am sure their intention was not for anyone to take offence.

Thanks for taking the time to reply on this. I’m very keen to sell this internally and its little cracks like this that undermine it. Yes it’s being a little picky perhaps, it didnt cause me offense as such, more dissappointment. I’ll be there today, keen to listen!